SPLENDOR OF YOGA --- PART 19

THE WHOLE PROCESS OF ‘YOGA’ IS JUST TO GIVE YOURSELF

When say “give our self’, we may not know how to simply give our self. We need some kind of means to give our self. Whatever we may give in our life to anybody – we may give money, we may give food, or something else – all the things we actually give do not belong to us. Whatever we have today, the things around us, including our body – we gathered from this earth. And when we go, we have to give it back. We can’t take one cell of our body and go.

Whatever we have today with us is something that we have borrowed from this planet. It is not really ours. We can use it, we can enjoy it, but we really cannot own it. So, what doesn’t belong to us, we cannot give. There is really no giving.

Fundamentally, the only thing we can give is our self. But we do not know how to give our self simply. So we give through our money, food or something else. We are using a thing as a means to give. We are using activity as a means to give our self.

If we are not aware of this, then giving becomes a great problem. And if we don’t make our self willing to give our self, giving becomes a very painful process.

When we understand giving as giving only things, then naturally fear will come into us. This is because we tend to think, “If we give away everything, what will happen to us?” It is because of this understanding that we fear giving. Many have become stingy, miserly with their love, with their joy, simply because they only think in terms of – giving means things.

How many things can we give? “If we give away lots of things tomorrow nothing will be there.” So from this economy, slowly, we have become less loving, less joyous and less peaceful.

We can give only our self through whatever we do. So volunteering is a process of giving our self. It’s an opportunity to give us .We can simply sit here, close our eyes and give our self to the world. It is possible. But that level of awareness is not there in most human beings. Unless there is activity, people don’t know how to give themselves. They need action to give themselves towards something. So volunteering is a tremendous possibility in that direction which helps us gives our self. – We can really offer our self through our work.

Normally, in whatever little work we have to do, there are calculations. “How much should we do? Why should we do? What will we get out this?” In these calculations all the beauty of doing is gone. In these calculations the very process of life will become ugly.

Most of the things that we are doing in our life are things that we have chosen to do. In spite of that, in day-to-day activity, to do simple things, we struggle so much because we are unwilling to give. Some have forgotten that we have started this willingly. Whether it is our work, our marriage, our family, or whatever, we started all these willingly because we wanted them in our life. But once we started, we forgot why we started this, and now we have started giving unwillingly and it has become a painful process.

So volunteering is a way of learning to make our lives into a process of just giving. Volunteer means one who is willing. Not just to do this or that. He is simply willing. He is willingness

How to become 100 per cent willing? It is always best to start in a protected atmosphere, so that willingness can perpetuate into our everyday life as well and above all into we being so that we become willing.